Looper
Review
(May Contain Spoilers)
I
couldn't stop looking at Joseph Gordon-Levitt's upper lip. Was it prosthetic?
Did they just pad it from underneath? How much does it resemble Bruce Willis's
upper lip? Of course that's the “high concept” trick that shadows everything
else happening in Looper - making Gordon-Levitt
look like a younger version of Willis - sort of a silly stunt anyway since
everyone knows what they both look like. Its so-so execution here calls way too
much attention to the stunt itself, since Levitt seems afraid to move his face
lest his prosthetic (or whatever) lip not move or fall off or something. I
admit that it may be my fault for getting hung up on facial prostheses. I had
the same trouble with Nicole Kidman's turn as Virginia Woolf in The Hours.
Why put an ugly, fake nose on one of the most beautiful women in films? Did
anyone in the audience know or care what Woolf really looked like? And I for
one couldn't stop looking at the nose. Like that hangnail or broken
tooth that snags your attention even as you try to ignore it.
[There
was another whole paragraph here about Gordon-Levitt’s eyebrows and Amanda
Palmer in the Coin Operated Boy
video. Plus an ancient cultural reference to Howdy Doody. But enough already.]
Looper is about time travel. As happens to me with
most time travel movies, I got distracted trying to decide what would affect
what. But the characters seemed to know what they were doing or else they just
ignored the fine print. I was obviously supposed to do the same. The premise
is: in the more distant future (2070 I think) time travel is invented but used
only by gangland types to send people back to the near future (2040, when most
of the film takes place) to be assassinated. The assassins are called
“Loopers.” Seems like the people to be
assassinated should be the Loopers, but they didn’t ask me. Once in a while, an
assassin survives into the distant future and is himself sent back to be
assassinated. This is called “closing the loop,” and this is what happens to
Joe (Bruce Willis). This sets the plot in motion because guess who is supposed
to kill him? - none other than his
younger self played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It’s a clever enough idea except
that you can see it coming a mile off.
The
future is bad and the more distant future is worse. And to drive home just how
bad the future is the film takes place in Kansas Kansas – you ask? Who knew drug lords and organized crime
types would build such nice buildings? (In Kansas .)
You’re
wondering what Levitt’s upper lip has to do with anything. And I wondered how
such a lively, engaging actor could deliver such a passionless, unsympathetic
performance. I thought maybe the “stiff upper lip” had a lot to do with it. I
know we’re supposed to think he’s dead on the outside, emotionally stunted by
the horrible things he has to do as a Looper. But Levitt’s character is dead on
the inside too. Maybe Levitt needs more freedom of face and body to express his
character’s inner life. In this straightjacket of a role he was totally wooden.
His eyes are as blank as a stuffed rabbit’s.
Bruce
Willis comes off somewhat better. He has returned from the more distant future
to the near future on a mission to save the life of his wife in the more
distant future by killing the man responsible for her death (in the distant
future). Of course at this point that man is only a boy. Willis’s wife and
their life together are sketched in with some flashbacks (forwards?) where he
shows a more romantic side. But in the present he’s all right-hand-of-God
righteousness even if it means gunning down two innocent children and one (future)
guilty one. That’s some strange moral calculus where three children’s lives are
worth less than one middle aged woman. Alright, he does show a moment of regret
about shooting the little girl.
The
best character in the movie is the child who’s going to grow up to be the
Rainmaker, a drug lord/godfather/Voldemort style villain, unless Old Joe can
stop him. Played by Pierce Gagnon, he’s by turns vulnerable, funny, and
terrifying. He only appears in the last quarter of the film, but his
performance suddenly sharpens the plot and almost makes you care about the fate
of the other characters.
Almost,
but not quite. The women in the film are especially poorly conceived. The few
scenes of Old Joe’s love interest, played by Qing
Xu, are
filmed with all the vacuous sweetness of a Viagra commercial. The relationship
between Young Joe and his “girlfriend” Susie, played by Piper Perabo, is based on how conveniently he can fit into her
schedule as a hooker. The little boy’s mother Sara, played by Emily Blunt, is
more interesting until we find out that the reason she’s so uptight is not that
she’s wrestling with raising the future destroyer of the civilized world. No,
she just needs a good lay, and Young Joe will oblige, of course.
The
writer and director, Rian Johnson who also directed Brick (2005) and The Brothers
Bloom (2008), keeps the plot humming along at a good clip – no dead patches
in which we’d have time to question the logic of the story. But there’s also no
room for engaging any real sympathy for the characters. I know I was supposed to feel something, but it’s
hard to cozy up to cold, amoral assassins.
-Mitch Walters
-Mitch Walters
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